shelf I slipped into as if it were sized for me. The flyers crossed back and forth in a search pattern and I watched them for hours until, exhausted, I fell asleep, wedged tightly in the small crack.
A Skeptical Believer
"Ed, hey Ed." Mark Johanssen shook my shoulder. "You OK?" The big, lineman body housed the soul of an ardent programmer, a long time associate of mine.
"Mark, sure. Yes. I was just daydreaming." I stood up and went to the water cooler. I passed Elise. She sat at her terminal, her eyes closed, a strained look on her face.
Now I was terrified. The dream was real, and they were all living it. I tried to call Martin.
Martin was gone for the day. When I checked back at Elise's desk she wasn't there. She had signed out: sick.
I muddled through another hour then took some comp time. I headed for the library. It was desperation, maybe there was a book on this, something that could help me understand. I was even afraid to close my eyes.
Motivated as I was it was still difficult to ask the librarian for a book on lucid dreams. I felt as if everyone I knew at the University was standing around with carved expressions of astonishment on their faces. Pragmatic Ed Bell reading about dreams? I hurriedly signed out some titles.
Three hours of reading didn't help. There was no mention about dreams that were actually real, not just continuation dreams, but dreams shared by several people, dreams that were concurrently going on. I thought they should be called real-time dreams.
This situation was more than a challenge, it tore at my belief in myself. What tools did I have to work with? If I was going insane, if there was some group hypnosis going on, how could I get out of it?
There was nothing I couldn't handle. That was the first thing. I yelled it out loud in my home office. "There is nothing I can't handle."
I learned it as a boy on my Uncle's ranch. Uncle Bret Chelton, was a tough and affectionate surrogate father.
"There just isn't any problem you'll face that you can't deal with, long as you take it in pieces." I could hear Bret's voice. That philosophy made programming a natural skill. Everything could be worked out, bit by bit, portion by portion.
What were the portions here? On Landine I had a formula. It was on a paper in my pocket. Even if this was just a strange quirk of my thinking, and of Martin's and Elise's thinking, I had to face it as if it was real. That meant I had to solve it. And somewhere in my tool box of abilities, I had the means to solve it.